


In A Room With God

by EliteDelieght



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom, Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Not Incest, Post-999, mild ztd spoilers but like. its pretty much just the basic description of ztd so, nothing specific
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 08:21:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7927564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EliteDelieght/pseuds/EliteDelieght
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when he looks at his sister, he wonders who he's really speaking with. </p><p>((Akane and Aoi, set directly after 999))</p>
            </blockquote>





	In A Room With God

**Author's Note:**

> So this has been sitting in my drafts for two years [I wish I was joking], but I finally got the motivation to finish it today! When I started writing this, ZTD hadn't even been announced, and this had a way different ending that involved Akane leaving Aoi so that he wouldn't have to participate in the events leading up to VLR? but since that headcanon got squashed I fixed it up a bit. 
> 
> This is pretty much all based on headcanons, and does describe a brief moment of disassociation on Aoi's part at one point.

Akane had rolled down the windows.

He hadn't questioned it. He had been too intent on driving as fast as humanly possible through the Nevada desert. Heat beat down on their tiny jeep, waves of it rolling up off the bare land. Even the dry wind blowing through the open windows was too hot to do more than whip their hair into a frenzy and dry sticky sweat to their foreheads.

Aoi knew they had a limited window of time to escape through. Akane's knowledge of this future spanned only as far as the incinerator. Neither of them knew what they would be facing from here on out.

But that hadn't mattered. They had succeeded. The Nonary game was over and Akane was sitting beside him and they were on their way to a future uninhibited. Being on the run didn't matter- nothing really mattered as long as Akane was alright and by his side.

That's what he had thought, at the time.

Looking back on it, the only part of the car ride that stood out was Akane rolling down the windows.

All four of them, plus the skylight.

She had done so silently, sat beside him silently, and he had driven silently, his fingers tapping against the steering wheel. There had been no sound beyond the wind through the car as they sped towards the distant horizon. Both of them were too wrapped up in their own thoughts.

Aoi had continuously glanced in the rear view mirror, checking for another car in the distance, or a plume of dust to suggest the incoming arrival of one. Akane had stared straight ahead through the windshield, her gaze never faltering.

Dust got in his mouth and made his eyes water. Aoi didn't close the windows.

It wasn't until hours later that their unsteady silence was broken.

They had checked into a motel for the night. They had driven the entire day, stopping only for gas. The siblings kept to back roads, occasionally doubling back. There was no set destination in mind- if they didn't have one then no one could predict where they would end up.

 They would have kept going, but there were only so many all-nighters they could pull in a row.

 Akane had stayed in the jeep while he paid for the room. He paid with cash, joked around with the desk guy in as bland a way as possible. Unfortunately, blending in was a bit hard when you were a Japanese man dressed like a Hot Topic reject in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere-Nevada.

 Aoi could only hope no one would come asking questions until they were long gone.

 The room itself was nothing special. Peeling wallpaper, a stained shower, stiff sheets. Akane had suggested sleeping in Building Q once, about a year before. To get used to being there, she'd said, as though they hadn't been spending most of their time there already. She'd offered him the first class cabin, a teasing note filtering through her voice.

 He'd taken her up on the silent challenge, though they'd both ended up in the second class cabins across from each other, half a puzzle room assembled around them. Logically, he'd known that the creaking wasn't that of a ship on the ocean. He knew there wasn't a bracelet around his wrist and a bomb in his gut. He _knew_ that it was just the two of them in the building, and that none of the doors were locked yet.

 But he didn't sleep that night. A mental clock ticked on in his head, silently counting down the nine hours until dawn. Akane slipped through the door five hours in, obviously just as restless. Perhaps, he thought, he had been transmitting his anxiety through the morphogenetic field.

 If that was true, she said nothing of it as she climbed into the narrow bed beside him.

 They were used to sharing a bed. After their parents had died, Aoi had dropped out of school and picked up three part time jobs. The pay was under the table, the hours were long, and all he could afford was a one-bedroom apartment. He'd insisted that Akane take the bedroom, since he worked so many graveyard shifts anyways. Often, the only sleep he got was between shifts, while Akane was at school. He'd pass out on the futon in the main room.

 But there were nights where Akane had nightmares, or nights where he fell asleep reading her bedtime stories when coffee could no longer keep up with his lack of sleep.

 So when Akane settled beside him that night, half hanging off the bed while he was smushed against the wall, he saw the bags under her eyes and felt a twist of guilt in his gut. He had no right to feel like that. No right to get skittish on boats, or to have breakdowns in locked rooms. He had no right to get nauseous when he smelled cooking meat. Akane was the one who suffered. The one who died. She was the one being forced to live out endless timelines filled with death and pain and-

 She reached out, laying a perpetually warm hand against his cheek. She hadn't offered any words of comfort, but she'd curled closer to him, knowing that it would be enough to calm his racing thoughts. Being able to touch her and know she was solid was was enough to remind Aoi that she was real. They were in the Alpha timeline. They had to be. He'd make sure they were.

 (Neither of them mentioned the days where Akane was less than corporeal. The days she was more a wisp of smoke and the scent of wildfire than she was a girl.)

 The motel room had separate beds, and Aoi automatically claimed the one nearest to the door. Akane stood silently at the entrance, her gaze distant in a way that he usually associated with the morphogenetic field. And yet he had a feeling this was something entirely different. Shock, maybe, that their nine-year journey had finally ended.

 Slowly, she drifted across the room, hands finding the window latch and sliding it open. The night air drifted in, rapidly cooling now that the sun had set. A shiver ran down Aoi's spine.

 "Akane." His voice was cautious, and he vaguely realized it was the first thing he'd said to her since the Nonary Game had ended.

 She didn't answer at first, her gaze focused on the desert outside. After a long moment of silence, she turned to him with tears in her eyes and a smile on her lips.

 "I'm okay." She said. "I'm alive."

 "You're alive." He repeated, suddenly unsure whether he was saying it to comfort her or himself. "You're _alive_."

 Suddenly they were rushing at each other, hugging in a way that was more elbows and desperation than anything else. He held her shaking form tightly, and by the time he pulled back they were both laughing. It was probably hysteria, or their mutual relief after nine years of uncertainty being amplified by the morphogenetic field.

 He swung Akane around into a sloppy two-step, nearly knocking her into the tiny desk with the motion. He only half-remembered the dance his mother had taught him in their kitchen so many years before. But it didn't matter. Akane was alive and nothing else mattered. Not the years of struggling, of building Crash Keys, not the fact that they were on the run, or that he was twirling her around a tiny motel room in the middle of nowhere. All that he cared about were her cold hands clasped in his as he swung her around, her exhilarated laughter filling the room like music.

 Eventually they came to a stop, Akane still giggling. Her cheeks were flushed from the activity, instead of fever, and Aoi offered up silent thanks to a God he didn't believe in.

 "Alright, Princess. Bedtime." He clapped a hand to her shoulder as he pulled away.

 "Aoi-nii, I'm twenty-one!" She protested happily.

 "We've got an early morning tomorrow, and I'm not hauling your ass to the car because you won't wake up." He jabbed her in the ribs. "I'll even let you take the bathroom first."

 "You spend more time in the bathroom than I do, anyways!" She said, already ducking towards the door.

 "Don't make me ground you!"

* * *

 

When he woke up in the middle of the night, he didn't think much of it. Sleeping through the night had been more of a concept than a reality, since his parents had died. The first Nonary Game had only made his insomnia worse, so it stood to reason that a second game would have the same effect.

 But when he sat up, he realized that Akane was no longer in the next bed over. She'd dragged the desk chair to the open window, her loose hair drifting away from her face in the breeze.

 "Akane?"

 "It isn't over." Her voice was not her own. It held knowledge past her years. It was the voice of an ageless, omnipotent being. A being who had seen countless timelines played out like a storybook. It was the voice that made Aoi's blood run cold. The voice he never thought he'd hear again.

 He had never been very religious, but when she spoke like that he could almost believe he was in a room with God.

 "Akane...?"

 When she turned around, he was silently thankful that it was his sister's face looking back at him. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

 He watched her silently, drinking in the way the angles of her face became sharper as the moon peaked out from behind a cloud. The colors seemed to drain from the room as the shadows lengthened. She looked like something out of an old horror movie for a fraction of a second, a sensation Aoi had grown accustomed to over the years.

 "Aoi-nii..." Her soft voice broke the spell, and she was immediately his little sister again, like the moment had never happened. The moon slid back behind the clouds. "I don't want to ask any more of you."

 He slid from the bed, bare feet silent on the scratchy carpet. "You've never asked me for anything I wasn't willing to give."

 She shook her head. "I need to protect you, now," she whispered. "You've spent so long..."

 Aoi thought, suddenly, of the incinerator. He remembered the way the waves of heat had rolled off the metal walls. The way his pounding footsteps had echoed up and up and up. He remembered the smell as he'd collapsed next to what had once been his sister and the chant of _my fault, my fault, my fault..._

 Akane let out a shuddering breath and he realized, with a start, that his sister was being forced to relive that moment through him, amplified through the morphogenetic field.

 "Sorry." He mumbled, knowing that no amount of apologies could make up for the past. He kneeled down beside her chair, a hand on her knee.

 "... In a year, there's going to be an experiment. A psychology test, to see how people will be able to handle living in isolation on Mars." She looked up, finally, when Aoi nodded. "I need to be there."

 "Sure." He shrugged, playing at nonchalant the way he played at being Santa. "Should be easy. Why?"

 She reached up, clasping her cold hands to his cheeks. "If I'm not there, something terrible will happen." Her voice cracked. "Something terrible will happen, and you'll die."

 "I might not." He whispered, though he knew he couldn't stop her from doing this. She shook her head again.

 "I can't take that chance."

 He sighed. "I understand." He mumbled. "But that doesn't mean I have to like it."

 She let out a watery laugh. "I love you, Aoi-nii."

 "Yeah." He stared up at her, an eternity fitting into that small moment. "I love you too, twerp."

Akane nodded, seemingly placated by his words, and her hands pulled away from his face so she could reach over and shut the window.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I hope this doesn't come across as me trivializing Akane's experiences. What she went through and goes through during the series is SUPER FUCKED UP, but I feel like it's easier for me to describe through Aoi? I just relate to him better, so I frame it around the way he views Akane, i guess. 
> 
> Also its never rlly stated clearly here, but I do headcanon Aoi with PTSD


End file.
